Earlier this week, to the delight of the young, the young at heart, gay boys and lecherous cable TV execs all around the globe, British boy band One Direction released the video for their single "Kiss You." This video is a thumbnail illustration of what makes this group so much fun to watch because it is so fucking homoerotic. Most of the boys are on record as women-daters (Harry Styles is apparently insatiable), but their overall image is full of winks, nudges and crotch-grabs. Their perpetual game of are-they-or-aren't-they makes them engaging on a level we've never seen from a prefab pack of kids singing plastic pop.

One Direction's peppy new video for their single, "Kiss You," features a lot of…
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Like most of their videos after their second, "Gotta Be You," in "Kiss You" they are seen in a homosocial frolic (females, if they show up in their videos at all, are generally portrayed in fleeting, blurry shots and/or in the background). In "Kiss," the boys sing to each other. Harry Styles (Taylor Swift's on-again-off-again) tweaks Zayn Malik's nipples. Zayn kisses Harry. Louis Tomlinson, who it is has been rumored to have a thing with both Harry ("Larry Stylinson" is how the hypothetical couple is referred to) and Zayn (together they are Zouis), pops his hips, showing off the outline of his possibly half-stiff cock, or wand erection, if you will.

This is just the latest and most overt example of the X Factor UK alums' nearly nonstop deluge of open flirtation with each other and the idea that they are, in fact, boy band members who have sex with boy band members. Denials be damned, "Kiss You" is their most bromantic offering yet.

One Direction fans who aren't swooning tweens approach this game of Spot the Gay as a sport. Entire Tumblrs are devoted to sniffing out and reporting signs of their intergroup gayness. What makes One Direction beautiful is what makes them seem gay. The evidence of the group's homoeroticism has been covered ad nauseam elsewhere, but just to recap:

They habitually grab each other's crotches. Says Niall, "Harry's got some next level crotch. He's got some crotch bulge going on there." Zayn enthuses, "We do it when we're taking photos. We make each other laugh, grabbing each other's bums."

All of this is very adorable, but it's also a very tangible sign of how times have changed — instead of asshole-clenched paranoia at the suggestion of gayness, kids these days are courting the inevitable speculation on their sexuality (if you want to know what I mean by inevitable, type the name of any male celebrity into Google and then type "G" — "gay" will come up almost always). In this way, they control that conversation and their game also works as a challenge: So what if we are? They prove that there is no good rebuttal to that question.